Monday, April 27, 2009

Before playing the last selection in an April 26 recital at Disney Hall in Los Angeles, pianist Krystian Zimerman announced that this would be his last performance in the United States, Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times reports:http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/04/krystian-zimermans-shocking-walt-disney-concert-hall-debut.html"In a quiet but angry voice that did not project well, he indicated that he could no longer play in a country whose military wants to control the whole world," Swed writes. " 'Get your hands off my country,' he said."The Polish-born pianist, Swed notes, has had run-ins with U.S. border security, including an episode not long after the 9/11 attacks when federal agents confiscated and destroyed one of his pianos. (Apparently, ether, which he uses to clean and condition felts, alarms security checkers, Zimerman told me before a University of Richmond appearance in 2004.)UPDATE 1: "Get your hands off my country" apparently was an oblique reference to U.S. plans to position a missile defense shield in Poland, Andrew Gumbel reports in The Guardian:

Saturday, April 25, 2009

The Richmond Festival of Music’s week-long survey of music of the 18th century neared its conclusion, curiously, not far from where it began – in rustic sound effects and evocations of the dance.

The front end of this was no particular surprise – Vivaldi concertos and Telemann suites are known for representational effects and dance rhythms. These were sublimated by most end-of-the-century classicists – Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven – but definitely not by Luigi Boccherini in his Quintet in C major, known as "Night Sounds of Madrid."

Cellist James Wilson, the festival’s artistic director, joined the Escher String Quartet in the Boccherini, and provided a point-by-point guide to the composer’s aural streetscape in program notes. The work, whose march finale became one of the greatest hits of the late 18th century, received an outsized, even boisterous, reading from the five fiddlers. Impersonations of tolling bells by a violin and of a guitar by two cellos were two among many vividly rendered effects.

Pianist Carsten Schmidt and the Escher opened the festival’s final program with a chamber version of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 11 in F major, K. 413. The first movement was unruly and imbalanced; the performance gelled in a sensitive reading of the central larghetto and achieved some real sparkle in the finale.

The Escher – violinists Adam Barnett-Hart and Wu Jie, violist Pierre Lapointe and cellist Andrew Janss – played up to their billing as one of the country’s premiere young string ensembles in a concluding reading of Beethoven’s Quartet in A major, Op. 18, No. 5. The leader, Bennett-Hart, is an extroverted player who doesn’t skimp on big, vibrato-laden tone, and his colleagues generally follow suit, although Lapointe and, occasionally, Janss inject more fibrous playing into the mix.

The ensemble sounded enormous from 15 feet away, the vantage from which most of this audience heard it; clearly, these players aim to fill bigger halls with sound. In stylistic inclination, and in tone and projection, the Escher recalls the Guarneri Quartet in its prime.

In a Chamber Music Society of Central Virginia special event, cellist James Wilson will play two of Bach’s solo suites in a free concert at 7:30 p.m. April 28 at the Hermitage at Cedarfield, 2300 Cedarfield Parkway in Richmond. Details: (804) 519-2098; www.cmscva.org

Friday, April 24, 2009

ASCAP has put its Deems Taylor Awards for music writing on "hiatus," with no word on when or whether the annual awards will resume.The Deems Taylor has been the highest honor that musicians bestow on the people who write about music. That's meaningful, professionally and personally, to the recipients. (I am one, vintage 2003.) I'll second the sentiments of Susan Elliott at Musical America, who writes: "It is an unfortunate turn of events for classical music coverage, an ever shrinking area that, now more than ever, deserves all the recognition it can get."

(Reader caution: Hard-core record collectors' stuff follows.)The European Parliament has approved an extension of copyright protection for recordings from the current 50 to 70 years, The Guardian reports:http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/24/eu-extends-copyright-70-yearsThis further nudges shut a door through whose cracks have come hundreds of reissues from the 78 era, transcriptions of concert recordings, airchecks from broadcasts and other sources that have enlivened, and at times enraged, classical performers and listeners. Sizeable portions of the discographies of certain artists, from Carlos Kleiber and Sergiu Celibidache to Walter Gieseking and Ginette Neveu, come from such sources.Not all the finer points of intellectual property law have been observed in some of these releases. (Is that weasel-worded enough to keep lawyers off my back?) In pre-European Union times, some countries extended copyright protection for much shorter periods than the international norm, and recordings in their public domain circulated in countries where the material was still protected. There have been occasional legal proceedings, and a few semi-juicy scandals. Also, a lot of grousing among collectors regarding sound quality, reliability of source matter and properly pitched transfers.All that could be coming to an end. A 70-year copyright would extend back to 1939, and cover the mature recordings of most every prominent artist heard in living memory. These won't disappear entirely; specialty firms will continue to offer discs and downloads, passing on to buyers any additional costs from licensing arrangements with the source labels.As for the transcriptions and airchecks, who knows? A producer might have to jump through all kinds of hoops – dickering with state radio networks, estates of deceased artists and, for all we know, stagehands' unions – to obtain suit-proof clearance to circulate a recording. And the resulting cost to the consumer might far exceed the value of the document. (What would you pay to hear a famous artist or legendary cast in a recording that sounds like it's coming over a bad phone line?)Anyway, heads up, collectors: Many of the flawed but still fascinating non-studio recordings of great orchestras, conductors, instrumentalists and singers of the past – especially those active since World War II – may soon disappear from circulation or cost a lot more. Get ’em while you can.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

The April 30 and May 3 concerts of the Richmond Symphony's Kicked Back Classics series have been canceled. Ticket holders are advised to contact the symphony box office at (804) 788-1212.These were to have been the final installments of the casual concert series. In the 1990s KBC played to capacity crowds in the Tredegar Iron Foundry. After being moved out of Tredegar, the series was staged at various venues – this season, it tried The National – but never found a space with the same levels of intimacy and interactivity.Next season, the orchestra will replace KBC with Lollipops, a series for children and families at the Carpenter Theatre.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

No, this isn't about going to the opera and forgetting to turn off your cell phone. It's a contest, run by the estimable mistress of the Canadian music blog The Omniscient Mussel. Summarize the plot of an opera on Twitter, using its mandated 140 characters or less.Actually, this is the second round of the contest. The winning entry from the first round, by Olivia Giovetti: "Seamstress pals around with bohemians in a December-May affair. Receives muff as parting gift." (Puccini's "La Bohème")Rules for the new contest:http://theomniscientmussel.com/2009/04/operaplot-rules-and-faq/

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Transition night at the Richmond Festival of Music, from the baroque style that was the exclusive focus of the first concert to the early classical or rococo, the tuneful, jovial antecedent to the classical style of the mature Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, which will occupy the festival’s performers in the last two programs.

The transitional selections on this program were the Flute Sonata in E minor of Prussian King Frederick the Great, the most famous of Europe’s music-making royals, and one of Haydn’s earliest string quartets (which he called a Divertimento), the E flat major, Op. 9, No. 2. About a generation (1740-70) separates the two, and the shift in style between them – from decorous elaborations on dance tunes and airs to extended sonata form, with its tension and surprise – was about as radical as the shift from romanticism to modernism in the decades before and after 1900.

Colin St. Martin, playing a wooden transverse flute, was featured with harpsichordist Carsten Schmidt in Frederick’s sonata, a lightweight piece that nonetheless calls for considerable technique in its fast movements. The performers nicely captured the energetic flourishes, à la Vivaldi, in the sonata’s central vivace movement.

Violinists Florian Deuter and Mónica Waisman, violist Daniel Elyar and cellist James Wilson feasted on the dynamism and unpredictability of the Haydn. The sound of their period-style, gut-strung instruments was especially gratifying in the adagio, in which straight tone at very low volume created an almost otherworldly weave of fine strands of tone.

The program opened with three examples of high-baroque style: Telemann’s "Concerto à Quatre" in A major for strings and continuo, Jean-Marie Leclair’s Sonata in G minor for two violins and François Couperin’s "Quatrième Concert Royale" for flute, violin, cello and harpsichord.

As in the festival’s opening concert, Deuter’s virtuosic and intricately inflected violin playing made the most striking impression. St. Martin’s flute complemented the violin in the prélude and sarabande of the Couperin, and the flute’s softer tone provided contrast with the fiddle as they traded leading roles in other sections of the piece.

The string ensemble’s chugging quality in the speedy finale of the Telemann – hard if not impossible to replicate on modern fiddles – testified to the value of hearing 18th-century music on instruments and in the style of its time.

Deuter and Waisman produced a fine weave of tone in the Leclair, but couldn’t compensate for the repetitiousness of the piece.

Monday, April 20, 2009

Steve Reich's Double Sextet, introduced by eighth blackbird on March 26, 2008 at the University of Richmond, has won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for music.

The Pulitzer music jurors cited Reich's composition as "a major work that displays an ability to channel an initial burst of energy into a large-scale musical event, built with masterful control and consistently intriguing to the ear."In reviewing the first performance, here's how I described the piece: "Reich’s [Double Sextet] opens and closes with emphatic, layered ostinato played off against sighing long notes from strings and winds, which gradually pick up the insistent rhythmic figure. The central section is lyrical, gently rocking like a barcarolle. Nervy syncopation and chorale-like melody rub against each other, as in jazz and blues."UR was among seven institutions that commissioned Reich to write the Double Sextet for eighth blackbird.Tim Munro, the flutist of the ’birds, writes on his blog that the group plans to record the Reich in September for Nonesuch Records, with a release anticipated next year:http://www.eighthblackbird.com/blog/2009/04/20/double-sextet-wins-the-pulitzer/

"Reich is a truly wonderful composer: rigorous, honest, and inspiringly dogged in his pursuit of his ideas, which he has followed through his career in such a way that each piece seems to build on and expand from the knowledge developed in the last," Anne Midgette writes on her blog for The Washington Post. The post links to her reviews of eighth blackbird's Richmond premiere and a subsequent Washington performance of the Double Sextet:http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-classical-beat/

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Period instruments – especially gut-string, short-necked baroque fiddles, with their curved bows – have a checkered history in these parts. Keeping them in tune and squeak-free, with consistency of tone production and power of projection, have proved to be challenges too rarely met. We typically blame the muggy climate of the Mid-Atlantic – as if it weren’t just as humid or more so in Britain, the Netherlands, Flanders and Germany, where the instruments and their players thrive.

The culprit is not the climate. It’s a shortage of American musicians who’ve gone to the trouble to unlearn the mechanics and techniques of modern instruments and start, not from scratch but not too far from it, to master an antique instrument and the styles of execution and expression that were state-of-the-art when these instruments were, in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Actually, there’s no shortage of American fiddlers who know to bend and shade long notes and draw crunchy sound textures from fiddles; but most didn't study in conservatories and don’t play Bach and Vivaldi. They play traditional mountain music and bluegrass.

As I listened to violinists Florian Deuter and Mónica Waisman lead an ensemble of period instrumentalists through the Suite in E minor from Book 1 of Telemann’s "Tafelmusik," I kept being reminded of Appalachian string bands – the way they take a fast tempo and make it breakneck or quicksilver, the way they italicize brilliant flurries of notes, they way they bend and stretch notes for expressive effect. More than once, I wanted to scribble in my notes "quick ’n’ devilish" – the highest praise one can give a bluegrass fiddler.

Deuter and Waisman, active players in the European period-instruments movement (Deuter has been leader, or first violinist, of Musica Antiqua Köln and several other leading ensembles in the field), joined violist Daniel Elyar, cellist James Wilson, double-bassist Anthony Manzo, flutists Colin St. Martin and Mary Boodell and harpsichordist Carsten Schmidt in the first of two baroque programs opening this year’s Richmond Festival of Music.

Deuter’s performance in the Telemann amounted to a clinic in baroque violin performance: a light touch combined with sharp attacks, sighing phrasing of expressive passages, crisp and extroverted treatment of dance rhythms, use of dynamics rather than vibrato to shape notes. The rest of the group took its stylistic cues from Deuter – and more importantly, caught his spirit.

Although the ensemble played the suite one to a part, projection wasn’t a problem in this intimate, bright-sounding space. Flutes often stand out from strings when the Telemann suite is played on modern instruments; here, the wooden transverse flutes of St. Martin and Boodell blended into the ensemble and shaded the colors of string tones.

The Telemann was the program’s finale – appropriately, as it was a summation of the compositional and instrumental techniques of the three works that preceded it: Vivaldi’s Concerto in A minor for flute, strings and continuo; the Trio Sonata in C major of Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, a short-lived pupil of J.S. Bach; and the Sonata à 4 in D minor of Johann Friedrich Fasch, a Bach contemporary.

These performances peaked in the subtle turns of phrase and expressive affectus of slow movements, notably by St. Martin in the larghetto of the Vivaldi and Deuter and Waisman in the largo of the Goldberg. Wilson, the cellist who is the founder and artistic director of the festival, anchored the continuo (rhythm section) with richly textured playing.

The Richmond Festival of Music continues with a program of Telemann, Haydn, Couperin, Jean-Marie Leclair and Frederick the Great at 7:30 p.m. April 21 at First Unitarian Universalist Church of Richmond, 1000 Blanton Ave. at the Carillon. Tickets: $25. Details: (804) 519-2098,www.cmscva.org

In Northern Europe and German-settled American towns such as Bethlehem, PA, Easter-season performances of Bach’s "St. Matthew Passion" are a custom, as Christmastime performances of Handel’s "Messiah" are in Anglophone lands. (Never mind that "Messiah" was written for Easter.) In Richmond, a "St. Matthew Passion" comes along about once in a decade; so performances are never routine or encrusted by traditions built up in years of repetition.

It’s not especially surprising, then, that this "St. Matthew" contrasts markedly with the two others heard in Richmond in 1985 and 1999. Mark Russell Smith, the outgoing music director of the Richmond Symphony, leads a shortened (but still nearly three-hour) version in an English translation (largely his own). His interpretation draws extensively (but not slavishly) on the instrumental and vocal techniques of the "historically informed," period-performance-practice school. (The only actual period instrument used in these performances is a viola da gamba, played by Ann Marie Morgan.)

Smith employs a fairly large orchestra, divided into mirrored contingents of strings and winds, with high strings surrounding low strings and winds. In the April 18 performance, the Richmond Symphony Chorus also was divided, singing in the balconies on either side of the First Baptist Church altar/stage; the Greater Richmond Children’s Choir, which joined in the opening and concluding choruses of Part 1, sang lined up in front of the orchestra on the sanctuary floor.

Smith has the instrumentalists play with minimal vibrato, sometimes with antique techniques such as messa di voce, a swelling effect that gives long notes the quality of a sigh. Most of the vocal soloists, similarly, rein in their vibrato. Tempos are lively in arias, especially those of Part 1, with audible roots in the dance. The conductor emphasizes the dark, rather fibrous orchestral sound imparted by bassoons, low strings and organ (played by Joanne Kong).

The Richmond Symphony Chorus, prepared by Erin Freeman, is not immersed in baroque performance practice and does not attempt to impersonate period-style singers. The 80-odd voices sing straightforwardly and with a rich, robust ensemble sound, heard to best effect in the chorales that dot this work. The crowd-scene choruses of Part 2, in which the choir portrays the priests and mob tormenting Jesus, are treated with punchy exclamatory energy but not enough emotional heat. The children’s choir, led by Hope Armstrong Erb, brings a welcome lighter texture to the big choruses it joins.

Any performance of the "St. Matthew Passion" rises or falls on the strength of its Evangelist, whose vocalized narration consumes about a quarter of the work’s time span. This series of performances is blessed with Derek Chester, a tenor, also at ease in alto range, who knows how to ornament and inflect baroque recitative and treats his text as a story of high drama and urgent importance.

Kamel Boutros, a high baritone with the bright timbre of a tenor, brings deep character – and a striking imperturbability – as well as baroque stylish fluency to the role of Jesus.

The four aria soloists – soprano Linh Kauffman, alto Rebecca Ringle, tenor William Ferguson and bass Michael Dean – offer varying levels of projection and varying notions of baroque vocalization. Several seem to struggle with a new English text in a piece normally sung in German. But they make their expressive, emotive points – most tellingly in Kauffman’s reading of "Lord to Thee my heart is given" and Dean’s delivery of "Make yourself now pure, my heart."

The violinists, oboists and flutists playing obliggato in the arias consistently complement the vocalists and seem to revel in the timbral brilliance their instruments bring to a mostly dark tonal palette.

James Wilson’s Richmond Festival of Music returns this month for its fifth season of concerts and "informances," this time showcasing music of the 18th century, from Couperin and Vivaldi to Haydn and Beethoven.

Wilson, the former Shanghai Quartet cellist who launched a chamber-music festival during a short post-Shanghai stint on the Virginia Commonwealth University music faculty, is now a freelance musician based in New York and the Shenandoah Valley town of Staunton. He draws much of the cast of his Richmond festivals from the ranks of fellow freelancers; in recent years he has divided his time between the modern cello and performances of pre-romantic music on period instruments and with techniques believed to be prevalent in the 18th century, and has begun playing regularly with other "historically informed" musicians and as a period-style soloist.

The 2009 roster of the Richmond festival reflects that new direction. Artists for its four concerts and an "Ear Project" lecture-concert include four baroque-instrument specialists, violinists Florian Deuter and Mónica Waisman, violist Daniel Elyar, double-bassist Anthony Manzo and flutist Colin St. Martin. Mary Boodell, principal flutist of the Richmond Symphony, also will play a baroque instrument in some concerts. Similarly, Carsten Schmidt, Wilson’s partner and artistic director of the Staunton Music Festival, will alternate between harpsichord and piano in these concerts.

The festival’s most stellar guest stars this season are the members of the Escher String Quartet – violinists Adam Barnett-Hart and Wu Jie, violist Pierre Lapointe and cellist Andrew Janss – who will perform singly and collectively in the last two concerts of the series and a master class at VCU. The Escher currently is quartet-in-residence with Chamber Music Society Two of New York’s Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and shares a residence with the Emerson Quartet at Stony Brook University on Long Island.

Two other events, both free, are scheduled by the festival: a Wilson-hosted performance by a string quartet based at VCU, and Wilson in performances of two of Bach’s solo-cello suites.

Tickets for the festival are $35-$95 for the series and $10-$25 for single concerts. They may be ordered by calling (804) 519-2098 or visiting www.cmscva.orgThe Richmond Festival of Music’s 2009 lineup:

April 19 (4 p.m., First Unitarian Universalist Church of Richmond, 1000 Blanton Ave. at the Carillon) – "Baroque North and South," Deuter, Waisman,Colin St. Martin, Mary Boodell, Daniel Elyar, Anthony Manzo, James Wilson and Carsten Schmidt in works by Vivaldi, Telemann and Johann Friedrich Fasch.

April 21 (7:30 p.m., First Unitarian Universalist Church of Richmond, 1000 Blanton Ave. at the Carillon) – "Music Fit for a King," St. Martin, Deuter, Waisman, Elyar, Wilson and Schmidt in works by Telemann, Couperin, Haydn, Jean-Marie Leclair and Prussian King Frederick II (the Great).

Monday, April 13, 2009

The Takacs String Quartet will perform on Oct. 13 at the University of Virginia, opening the 2009-10 season of Charlottesville’s Tuesday Evening Concert Series. The Takacs’ program includes works of Beethoven and Schumann.

Other artists, all performing at 8 p.m. in U.Va.’s Old Cabell Hall, include:

Saturday, April 4, 2009

Via Alex Ross (www.therestisnoise.com), I've come across Instant Encore, a Web platform for audio and video of classical-music performances:www.instantencore.comGrazing the site for a couple of hours, I found extensive concert archives from several chamber-music series (best find so far: the Shanghai Quartet and pianist Yuja Wang playing the Schumann Piano Quintet, recorded at Music Mountain a couple of months before their November 2007 performance of the work at the University of Richmond) and a few orchestras (first-rate Brahms Fourth Symphony from the Indianapolis Symphony, Lawrence Renes conducting); also a lot of 3-minute samples and music by unfamiliar composers. The audio clips I heard were in FM-radio quality sound.The site has an events calendar covering, in apparently random order, headline events in most major U.S. cities. (A search takes you to Richmond, Charlottesville and the cities and counties of Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia, but oddly not Roanoke.)I haven't used other features of the site, such as tracking my concert attendance (what for, bragging rights?) or signing up as a fan of this or that artist, so I can't speak to their attraction or utility.* * * Also worth visiting: Weekly podcasts of vintage recordings on Archive Classics, from the producers of Pristine Classical CDs and audio downloads.Most of these performances are from the 78-rpm era, but audio remastering gets the most sound, and loses most surface noise, from the sources. Every artist featured on the current podcast – Wilhelm Furtwängler, Artur Schnabel, Jascha Heifetz, William Primrose, Walter Gieseking – contributes something unique to the music at hand. (The last bit, Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" from Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony, will be an inspiration to music directors of half-time shows everywhere): http://www.archiveclassics.com/podcast.asp

POSTSCRIPT: Yes, I noticed the resemblance between "Archive Classics" and "Concertmasters," the series I used to produce for WCVE-FM. Their show sounds better than mine did.

UPDATE: Very intense performances in a very live space, excellently captured. NPR Music will archive this program, and it's well worth (re)visiting when you have 90 minutes to devote to an absorbing musical experience.

Classical performances in and around Richmond, with selected events elsewhere in Virginia and the Washington area. Program information, provided by presenters, is updated as details become available. Adult single-ticket prices are listed; senior, student, group and other discounts may be offered.SCOUTING REPORT

* In and around Richmond: A concentration of 18th century music this month: The Richmond Symphony, Symphony Chorus and soloists (including Richmond-born tenor William Ferguson) perform Bach’s "St. Matthew Passion," April 17 at Second Baptist Church, April 18 at First Baptist Church and April 20 at St. Michael Catholic Church; and James Wilson’s Richmond Festival of Music presents four programs of baroque and classical repertory, April 19 and 21 at First Unitarian Universalist Church of Richmond, April 23-24 at Bon Air Presbyterian Church (the latter two feature the Escher String Quartet). . . . The Imani Winds wrap up this season’s Rennolds Chamber Concerts at Virginia Commonwealth University on April 4. . . . Opera Theatre VCU presents Puccini’s "Gianni Schicchi" and "Suor Angelica," April 25-26. . . . The symphony samples jazz-inspired classics in the first concert of a pair concluding the Kicked Back Classics series, April 30 at The National (the repeat is on May 1).

* New and/or different: Opera Lafayette gives a rare performance of Handel’s "L’Allegro ed il Pensieroso," April 3 at the Kennedy Center in Washington. . . . The National Symphony introduces Daniel Kellogg’s "Western Skies," April 16-18 at the Kennedy Center. . . . The Brentano Quartet and pianist Peter Serkin unveil a new Piano Quintet by Charles Wuorinen, April 17 at the Library of Congress in Washington. . . . Alto saxophone gets one of its rare symphonic showcases, as Timothy Roberts joins the Charlottesville and University Symphony in Paule Maurice’s "Tableaux de Provence,’ April 18 at the University of Virginia, April 19 at Monticello High School. . . . Ed Smith joins the U.Va. Percussion Ensemble in gamelan-inspired works, April 21. . . . The Audubon Quartet joins the Roanoke Symphony in a Holocaust Remembrance Weekl program, "Behind the Silence," April 21 at the Roanoke Performing Arts Theatre. . . . The Virginia Arts Festival presents the Kronos Quartet in music of contemporaty American masters, April 26 at The NorVa in Norfolk.

* Star turns: Gustavo Dudamel conducts the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, April 6 at the Kennedy Center (waiting list for tickets). . . . Pianist Krystian Zimerman plays one of his rare U.S. recitals, April 8 at the Music Center at Strathmore in suburban D.C. . . . Kurt Masur conducts the National Symphony and Master Chorale of Washington in Brahms’ "A German Requiem," April 9-11 at the Kennedy Center. . . . The Tokyo String Quartet and cellist Lynn Harrell perform on April 17 at Strathmore. . . . David Zinman conducts the National Symphony in Brahms, Schoenberg and Webern, April 23-25 at the Kennedy Center. . . . Pianist Christopher O’Riley plays Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand with the Baltimore Symphony, plus his arrangements of Radiohead tunes, April 24 at Strathmore. . . . Violinist Cho-Liang Lin plays Prokofiev in an all-Russian National Philharmonic program, April 25-26 at Strathmore. . . . Ravi and Anoushka Shankar, the father-and-daughter sitar masters, perform on April 25 at the Kennedy Center and in a Virginia Arts Festival program on April 28 at Chrysler Hall in Norfolk. . . . Mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter and friends revisit composers of the Terezin concentration camp in "Theresienstadt," April 30 at Strathmore.

* My picks: Krystian Zimerman’s recital, April 8 at Strathmore. . . . The Richmond Symphony’s "St. Matthew Passion," April 17, 18 and 20 at three area churches. . . . The Richmond Festival of Music's baroque-to-classical survey of 18th-century chamber music, April 19, 21 and 23-24 at two area churches. . . . David Zinman’s National Symphony program of Brahms, Schoenberg and Webern, April 23-25 at the Kennedy Center. . . . The Koronos Quartet playing works of Steve Reich, John Adams, Harry Partch, John Zorn and others, April 26 at The NorVa in Norfolk. . . . Ravi and Anoushka Shankar in Indian classical ragas, April 25 at the Kennedy Center, April 28 at Chrysler Hall in Norfolk.

About the blogger

A music critic and cultural writer based in Richmond, VA, Bustard wrote for the Richmond Times-Dispatch for 36 years. He has contributed to Style Weekly in Richmond, Symphony and Chamber Music magazines, the webzine NewMusicBox and other publications.
Bustard is a recipient of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for music writing, as well as awards from state and national press associations.